Nether Regions

by Nat Burns

  Sophie straightened her T-shirt and walked to Karen’s side. She took the hot cloth from the girl’s forehead and dipped it in the bowl of iced water resting on the cluttered nightstand. She stroked the cooled cloth across Karen’s forehead.

  “It shouldn’t be too much longer,” she whispered to the frightened girl. Karen’s big, Gypsy eyes were wide and rolling as she tried to deal with this insult to her body. Sophie wondered briefly if she remembered any pleasure from the act that had brought about this new life kindled inside her. Had it been good for her? Or a mechanical process to keep Andy interested? Perhaps she had been just that curious to see what it was her friends were talking about. Either way, it had brought her here to this place and changed her life forever.

  So... Sophie sat back in the hard, ladderback chair. Hospital in Goshen? She knew Karen had no money. Neither did her family, or Andy’s, for that matter. There’d be the bill to reckon with. She always took payment in barter and gladly. Hospitals were not so accommodating.

  Her hands went to Karen’s abdomen, and she gauged the baby’s position. Lower finally. Focusing energy on the baby, she massaged the clenching muscles enveloping it. They moved under her hands, gently pushing against the baby. Rhythm and timing consumed her completely as she pushed in tandem with each muscle contraction. The ministrations worked this time. With a gentle heave, the baby turned and moved lower into the birth canal.

  Moving to sit between Karen’s thighs, Sophie leaned forward on the stool. The head was crowning fast and there was a surprising amount of dark hair. Sophie combed the matted strands with her fingers, then moved the fingers wide to stretch the silky vaginal lips around the opening. The head protruded more, the underlying skin blue—a color that worried Sophie. Karen emitted loud grunting sounds of effort as she followed her body’s lead and panted and pushed.

  Andy stood at Karen’s side, his hand going white beneath her hard, panicked grip. He watched her pain with awe and some fear. He knew the comfort expected from him but couldn’t get there. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  “It’s coming,” Sophie said loud enough for Karen to hear. “Keep with it, Karen-girl. It’ll all be over soon.”

  “Thank the good Lord,” muttered Andy’s father. “We’ve had about enough of that caterwaulin’.”

  He sat in the living room, around one corner and within spitting distance from the sagging rope cot that Andy and Karen called their bed. Neglect shouted from every room in this trailer, from the dirty garage-sale sofa to the missing curtains at the kitchen windows. Poverty is a burden, but the defeat it spawns in those affected is something else again. The unwashed smell of old food was starting to get to Sophie. She’d been here too long.

  But the baby was coming. Sophie pressed against Karen’s flesh until the baby’s nose was freed, then carefully twisted the head up until the shoulders began working through. Then it was finished and Sophie was holding the surprisingly heavy infant, a girl. Realizing right away that something was wrong, she tipped the head down and patted the feet. A trickle of blood welled in the small nostrils. The baby moved, seemed to breathe once but did not breathe again. Sophie cleared the airway with a suction bulb, noting the blood there, slapped the feet, hung the baby upside down by her ankles and tapped the small buttocks. There was no response and the dusky color began to spread. She clamped and cut the cord and hurried from the bedroom. She laid the newborn on the cleared kitchen table, where she had prepared a small pallet. She checked the airway but saw no blockage, only a welling pool of blood deep in the baby’s throat. Sophie roughly massaged the small chest, watching helplessly as the spirit rose and moved away.

  “No,” she whispered and turned the baby facedown, cradling the small cooling face in her palm. She tapped the back with her fingers and a stream of fluid warmed her flesh. It was blood.

  “What’s wrong?” Karen asked. She had risen on her elbows and was trying to watch Sophie through the doorway.

  “I’m not sure,” Sophie said grimly. “The labor was long and she was trapped against your pelvic bone...” She turned the babe and stared down into the small, still face. The eyes were half-closed and the tiny rosebud mouth lay still and slack. Sophie used a cloth to wipe away the blood from the small lips and nose. She pressed her ear to the chest, then her stethoscope. There were no sounds at all, only Karen’s harsh breathing echoing around them. Andy’s father laid down his newspaper and looked over.

  The quiet form told Sophie all the secrets of death and irresistible light and nothing more. She pressed her forehead to the dead child’s face. The little girl had gone away. If, indeed, she’d been there at all.

  Karen wailed long and low, and grief swelled in the small rooms. Andy’s mother, Ida, left the sink, the dishtowel she’d been holding floating—an ineffective parachute—to the floor where she’d stood. She stumbled to the bedroom and draped her body across the grieving girl. They sobbed together.

  After slowly wrapping the tiny body in its yellow baby blanket, Sophie carried her to Karen. “This little soul wasn’t meant to be,” she said quietly. “Do you want to say goodbye?”

  Karen extended one hand but drew it back before it connected with the heavy bundle. “Why, Sophie?” she asked, eyes spilling tears.

  Sophie wanted to cry too, to sob long and hard, but she knew she needed to be the one in control.

  “It wasn’t anything you did, sweetness, always remember that. Maybe your body is too young. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.”

  Karen looked at the bundle.

  “Touch your first child, Karen. Tell her goodbye.”

  Karen pressed her fingers, nails dirty and covered in chipped glitter-fleck nail polish, to the baby’s arm. She patted it once, then drew back. “Her name is Gloria.”

  Sophie straightened. “That’s a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

  She laid Gloria in the cradle that had been prepared for her, then set about delivering a clean afterbirth and making Karen comfortable. There had been no episiotomy—Karen and Sophie had worked diligently to prepare—so there were no sutures. This was good. The memory and pain of the birth would fade more quickly.

  When finished, she drew Andy close to Karen’s side. “We’ll make funeral arrangements for Gloria and we’ll have a ceremony for her.” She paused and drew a deep shaking breath.

  “Brother Kinder will see to that, so don’t worry about it. The cost will be taken care of. What you need to worry about is getting well and back on your feet. I want you to stay in bed tonight and tomorrow, except for the bathroom. And be careful. Eat only some soup for the first couple days. Remember all we talked about. Tomorrow afternoon you get up and move around some, but rest when you feel tired. Do get up and move around, though.”

  Andy spoke, his voice ridiculously proud. “Don’t worry, Miss Sophie, won’t nothing keep her down. We’ll probably have to tie her down just to get her to rest at all.”

  Sophie nodded indulgently. “Well, don’t let her do too much. Her body needs time to heal. When she hurts give her two of those pills from the bottle I left on the counter. Call me right away if her legs start hurting or her chest hitches up, okay?”

  Karen appeared subdued, a small child who had fallen ill. Her mother was on the road, working tomatoes on the eastern shore of Virginia. Karen needed her mama, now especially, and Sophie was sorry the woman wasn’t here to offer comfort. Andy’s mother was a poor substitute, usually finding too much fault in her young daughter-in-law. “I’ll check in on y’all tomorrow. Sleep now, okay?”

  After using the phone to call the funeral home, Sophie carried Gloria outside to the front stoop and waited for the undertaker’s car to come. Thoughts of her own mortality surfaced to trouble her as she rocked the cooling infant in her arms. She had been a healer for more than twenty years now and had dealt with her share of death and new life. Always before she had managed to keep her equilibrium about it. Her acceptance had been Zen-like, understanding the vagaries of life and death—decisions beyond
her control. This, though—this rankled. She looked at the baby’s swaddled, still form, safe in its brand-new baby blanket, probably bought from the Walmart in Goshen.

  Karen, only fourteen, didn’t need a baby, true, yet why hadn’t the powers that be taken the baby earlier, before she had to suffer the pain of labor and birth, then the death of a fully formed child. Then, to add insult to injury, Gloria had appeared healthy, a viable infant. She just hadn’t been able to awaken to this life. The ways of the universe are unknowable and often cruel. Pondering the fine line between life and death, Sophie suddenly felt very alone.

  Chapter Seven

  Two-five-six Royal Court was quiet when Delora arrived home about ten that evening. She unlocked the door with a practiced stealth that anyone watching would have marveled at. Inside, she pressed the door closed and slipped the shoes from her feet. Luckily her bedroom was nearest the door so she could usually sneak in without too much noise.

  After removing her work clothes, she wrapped herself in a towel and crept along the hall to sponge off at the bathroom sink. Though she longed for a hot shower, running the shower this time of night with these old pipes would surely wake everyone. She’d made that mistake before. She brushed her teeth and returned to her room as silently as she’d left it.

  The window beckoned and, dropping her towel, she walked across to it. A weary twig of sweet gardenia struggled to bloom just outside, and she breathed in the wafting fragrance as she pressed her forehead against the cool pane of glass stretching across the top of the half-open window.

  Sometimes at night, naked like this, with just the ratcheting night bugs and her own imagination, she could be whole again. One hand reached down and stretched across the injured part and she felt the rough numbness of the skin there. She remembered times, before the fire, when she had displayed that part of herself to Louie, silently wanting his hand to caress there, to smooth that plane of softness. She turned from the window. There’d be no more of that. Wearily she opened the closet door and moved several boxes until she could access the cooler in the back left corner. Reaching inside, she lifted out a small hip flask of vodka.

  As she turned away, something caught her eye. A creased and tattered backpack had shifted to one side during her foray into the cooler. It resembled a ruptured stomach, its contents spilling out onto the closet floor. She moved into the tiny space, tugging a T-shirt from the top shelf and shrugging into it. Thus clothed, she knelt and neatened the pack enough so that she could pull it from the closet.

  Back on the bed, she sat tailor-style and systematically unloaded the bag’s contents. Tucked down one side was her father’s wooden cigar box. She carefully pulled it loose and rested it on the blanket, then retrieved a small silk bag. Peach-colored, it was gathered into a purse shape by a single satin cord. She hefted its loosely constructed weight thoughtfully back and forth on her widespread fingers before placing it on the bed. Beneath the purse lay an eight-inch by five-inch manila envelope. She pulled this free, revealing a tapestry lipstick case and three books below it.

  She reverently smoothed one hand across the sleek, though water-stained, cover of Tales from Shakespeare. Her mother had delighted in reading this to her every evening. As a young girl, Delora never understood the specific words, but the stories conveyed well. The cadence of the phrases had touched her, that and her mother’s obvious love for the work. Opening the book, she touched pages her mother had fondled and felt unreasonably close to her and comforted overall.

  The second book was a clothbound edition of Aesop’s Fables, a favorite of her father’s, and the third was an old copy of ’Twas the Night Before Christmas. This last was the first book she had learned to read all by herself. Reading it aloud had been a holiday ritual, usually at Christmas Eve dinner. She set the book aside. She hadn’t read it since the Christmas before her parents’ death.

  The backpack was now empty except for a small stuffed dog her father had won at a carnival when Delora was about four. One ear had been heavily chewed, and Delora remembered acutely the pleasure she had derived from the feel of the coated vinyl in her mouth. Bearing stains and cuts from the storm that had taken her parents’ lives, it had been through a lot.

  Delora placed it back in the bag and turned her attention to the humidor. Constructed of polished cherry, it was dark and mysterious, reminding Delora of faraway lands with unpronounceable names. The top opened with a slow creak and inside rested another part of Delora’s old life. She lifted out the small bottle of perfume and gently wiggled the stopper loose. The scent of her mother filled her nostrils and permeated the room. She took a deep breath and a familiar longing stirred in her.

  There was nothing left of the comfortable ranch-style home she and her parents had occupied. Her mother and father’s bedroom, which always bore this smell, was gone. The storm had stolen that as well as her parents.

  She looked down at the box and stoppered the Chanel. This bag contained what little had been found amid the rubble of her home. Her Aunt Freda had given her a few things as well.

  She opened the envelope next and peered inside. Photos, dozens of them. They were dog-eared from too much handling. In the beginning she had played a game by holding each photo in turn and, by trying very hard, to remember even the smallest detail from whatever event the photo depicted. She would sit for hours remembering or perhaps dreaming, inventing. She could never be sure.

  That was a long time ago, however, so today she merely pressed the envelope closed and pushed it into the pack.

  Reverently, taking time to finger each piece with tender, respectful nostalgia, Delora repacked the contents. She approached it as one would a puzzle, fitting each box or parcel into its exact nesting space. She sighed as she pulled the covering taut across the fullness. This was her real life. The life she led day to day now was someone else’s life that she had stumbled into.

  She touched the cold bottle of vodka nestled into the triangle created by her folded legs and lit her last cigarette of the day. Who was this scarred woman who drank straight vodka from the bottle late at night, reveling in her loneliness as if doing penance? This was not Delora Marrs Clark—the pampered only child of two loving parents. No, this was Delora Marrs Clark November, an entirely different person. Delora sincerely hoped the windows of heaven were shuttered when it came to her life. It was appalling to believe her parents could see who their daughter had become.

  Dispirited and ashamed, she rose and placed the sack on the floor of the closet, behind her beaten-up sneakers. She closed the door and stood indecisively in the middle of the room.

  She was only twenty-four. A babe still and her life was done. Yet she would not give up everything. The quiet magic of the night stole across her and, crushing out the cigarette, she relaxed against the pillows of her bed. Her fingers idly caressed one satiny pillow and teased a protruding corner. She’d bought these pillows herself, with her own money, from the discount store in Goshen. The overabundance of pillows on the bed pleased her and she felt almost guilty for pampering herself. Her eyes snared on her partially exposed abdomen and she flipped a corner of the comforter across it. Not that guilty. With her next run of big tips she planned to buy a smiley face throw rug for the center of the room.

  Lord knows, she’d better not buy any more maps. Her eyes grew fond as she studied the wall opposite her bed. About eighteen months ago, while foraging in Raymond’s used book store, she had discovered a huge fold-out map of the world. Bearing the National Geographic logo on the bottom left corner, the map was awe-inspiring, taking up the better part of the wall and dragging Delora in headfirst. The deep sky blue of the oceans soothed her as the outlined, colorful countries excited her. Strangely enough, it was the continent of North America that captured her interest more than any other. Colorful pushpins bristled in intriguing locales such as San Francisco, Corpus Christi, Key West, Fargo, Spokane. She said the names to herself, allowing the words to roll off her tongue like diamonds, with hard edges and dazzling facets. The
other continents just couldn’t match up. Turkey and Algeria, China and Kazakhstan. They didn’t fall as well. Too harsh maybe.

  She cracked the seal on the bottle and lifted the moist neck to her lips. Delaying the first sip, she teased her full bottom lip with the wetness of the rim, allowing the fresh, cool smell of the vodka to waft across her senses. The first sip was always the best. This was why she seldom overindulged. The taste got old quickly. A certain amount helped her sleep, however, and she welcomed that.

  Other maps decorated other walls. To her left stretched the great state of Alabama. The tourism bureau in Goshen gave those away free. She’d had to pay for the now-faded road maps, however, and the dog-eared atlas from Walmart that lay on the floor next to her bed. That was okay. Maps were a necessity. How else would she find her way away from Redstar when it was time?

  She took a deep sip and let her eyes roam the small bedroom. Having her own room again was one of the best things to happen to her in a long time. Not having Louie’s obnoxious presence next to her was a delightful freedom. She’d hated the way he dominated any room he entered. She still hated the sour sweet beer smell of him.

  Turning on her side, she slid her right hand along her thigh and up her side feeling the point of numb sensitivity that was almost a pain when her fingers strayed into the area of burned skin. If he ever touched her again she would die, absolutely drop like a bludgeoned cow.

  According to the doctors in Mobile, her repaired flesh could not take the thrust of a lover. They had made a point of telling Louie this. Blind and crippled by a repaired, rigid ankle broken while running from the fire, Louie was not likely to hurt her physically again. His words still hurt, however, and he knew just how to use them as weapons. These hours, though, from work until morning were hers alone and she cherished each one of them. No Louie, no Rosalie, just Delora and the image of who she used to be before she knew them.